ABCD Lars & Roemer

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Roemer van Toorn in conversation with Lars Lerup  I leave criticism to the young and to brilliant critics like Dave Hickey and Michael Sorkin. D as in Death of Architecture At first – on your arrival in America– you seem to “hate” capitalism. Like Manfredo Tafuri, you conclude that architecture is dead, and that our permanent values have lost their permanence and their manifestation in the city fabric. But later – confronted by, and living in, Houston – you start to be less pessimistic. You come to the conclusion that the resistance of traditional architecture in the face of radical mobility demands a rethinking rather than viewing it as an escape. Architecture should no longer be seen as a kind of static enterprise but instead as a form of software. Does this mean that somehow through your experiences in America your idea of architecture has changed? You have been a friend of Aldo Rossi – and today his plea for absolute architecture is returning… What is your “definition” of architecture? Yes, my evolution from “hating” to ambiguously “accepting” the current conditions is evident – today it is very hard for me to hate. Living in Houston has made me a compliant victim of the Stockholm Syndrome. Architecture will most certainly remain as long as homo faber exists, while the Architect – as some Foucauldian drawing on the beach – may disappear or be transformed until we no longer recognize it. Architecture therefore is a “moving feast” that architects may choose to forego – in the US they have done a very good job at leaving the responsibility to others: construction managers and market consultants are two examples. For me everything artificial, soft and hard, is architecture with a small a. At the same time, I would be sad if Architecture with a capital A disappeared. I once asked Aldo, “What is your favorite   4 
Roemer van Toorn in conversation with Lars Lerup  architecture?” To which he answered, holding me in his dreamy gaze, “The architecture of my friends.” I am afraid I am caught in the same sentimentality. Yet I view proclamations about Architecture’s death as premature, not unlike Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history.” Despite my deep affection for the vernacular, my long training in the “finer things of bourgeois life” will not leave me until my vision goes. A finely shaped human ankle – male or female – will catch my eye as readily as the rhino-induced shape of an imaginary shell produced by a student. In the end, my preference is for the broken and the used, not unlike traditional Japanese ideals. However, my own predilections are not messianic; in this sense I have no problem with the practitioners of the absolute. E as in Education Given the current condition of the Metropolis, you have rethought architecture education at the Rice School of Architecture. How do you see the role of the university (as an independent institute educating professional architects as well as public intellectuals who think further than what the client wants), the student, and academic research? Several international schools have abandoned individual (thesis) research and focus instead upon units led by a professor who produces architectural knowledge in collaboration with the students. Mapping the real, along with architectural expertise (technology) and even CAD-generated advanced forms (leading to “blobalization”), has become the trend today. What are the risks and advantages of these trends and shifts of focus in architecture education? And what would you advise the next RSA dean and his/her colleagues to do next? Or is the passion for the real (mapping and technology) enough? Let me begin by saying that my tolerance for others’ preoccupations is considerably greater than my tolerance for my own. Therefore   5 
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ABCD Lars & Roemer

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